Ash Holloway
Location: Arnco Mills Safehouse (E10)
Skills: Leadership
It seemed a final touch to the evening when Riley handed over the radio and found a soft spot to lay her head for the evening. At her request to wake her for her turn at watch, Ash grunted an agreeable
"Mmm hmm, yeah..." as he returned to his spot near the window. As it came to it, he preferred to take first watch. It meant that he had a single block of uninterrupted sleep over the course of the night, provided that something unexpected did not occur. In his experience, something planned by an intelligent source would happen just prior to dawn. Also in his experience, albeit more recent, no one without massive cause would be anywhere around this area at night, not with the number of the Dead drawn to the sound and fires of Newnan's collapse.
On the other hand, there still lay the possibility that someone from Newnan might wander up, having traveled at a slower pace or forced to take a longer route. Ash wanted to be immediately available in that case. It seemed to be a longshot. He had very little hope that anyone else was alive, or if so, was in any condition to make it very far.
Then the radio in his hands made him a liar. He knew that voice on the other end, garbled and mangled though it was. At least, he thought he did.
"Copy. Heard it too, Guy." Ash switched to a clearer, more direct tone of voice, addressing the third party (who he really hoped was who he thought it was),
"I cannot hear you. I hope you can hear me. We will be en route at first light. Southern safe house first, then rally point. Stay alive. Over and out." He looked to Jack, curious as to whether he was still awake. If it was Thana, he'd want to know.
To hell with it. Give the man some hope. He needed it more than any of them.
"Jack. Jack." he rasped, walking over to the possibly unconscious form of his Second.
"We thought we heard Tati on the box, Jack. And the word Zebulon. Thought you should know."
Thalia Carmichael
Location: Eden, Lower Lobby -> Doors across from Fitness
Skills: Stealth, Survival, Pistol
When someone commits acts of violence, one after the other after the other in rapid succession, killing more people in an hour than they had throughout the entirety of their life before, it tends to invoke a slew of emotions. Compound this with the death of the closest friend she had left in the world, especially now that the world had turned to shit. That's what Thalia would have thought, anyway. A bevy of uncontrollable feelings should be crushing her right now. Who knows? For all of her brooding and anti-social behavior back when there was cable television and jelly doughnuts, she was pretty sure that she would have broken down into tears or lapsed into shock over what had happened. But that just wasn't the case. Not at all.
Thalia's emotions were present, but held in check. An odd calmness came over her. She was going to die today or everyone else was - she understood this with specific clarity - and it was more likely that it would be her turn to go down in a hail of gunfire before it was accomplished. She didn't seem to care. What she
did care about was that they were brought to a standstill by some twitchy fuck who mowed down two of their group. Even if everything was going to by just hunky-dory, the guy who claimed to be a doctor could patch them up like new, and they could all join hands and sing later on, the truth was that they were massively exposed and she was the only one left to take point. No, she wasn't a soldier. She was a Gonzalez, even if her given name was Carmichael. Job wasn't done yet. Nine bullets left in one gun. Seventeen in the other. Five more mags besides. And a good blade doesn't run out of happy until you do.
She heard Thana weakly speak the words "Cough Cough", indicating that she was alive enough to be sarcastic. Good sign. Not great, but a good sign. That
Manny guy almost looked like he knew what he was doing. With little to no medical knowledge, she couldn't help anyway, and Alexander was assisting while simultaneously standing guard, of sorts. Thalia rose fully to her feet and began a purposeful stride toward the other end of the Lobby. Passing Thana upon the ground, she gave her a little smirk, acknowledging her use of sarcasm in the face of adversity and her own blood decorating the flooring panels.
"That's my girl." remarked, followed by the assurance,
"We've got this." Her clear duty was to kill as many people as possible. It just felt right.
Briefly, she wondered if this was how her uncle felt
all the time.
Following a shrug, Thalia poked her head into the corridor to her right, leading
away from a room marked "Fitness Center". All the way down to one side, there was a single armed man. She could not tell if he looked vengeful or nervous. Thalia gave a quick whistle to get the guy's attention before pumping three bullets out of her new Beretta and in the direction of her latest target. Two of them found their mark. She didn't bother stopping this time. One way or another, someone else was going to get shot. Thalia began to make her way down to where the man lay; perhaps he had friends that wanted to play, too.
